Sailing The Ocean
What may have worked in the past, may not prepare you for the future. Prakash Menon writes on the importance of adaptation
As retailers, we need to have the competitive edge. Now, if you simply continue to do what youve always done in the past, there is hardly a chance of survival. The idea is not to survive, but to thrive.
The perfect example is Cirque du Soleil. Cirque du Soleil is a classic example where circus was, once upon a time, the place for entertainment. There used to be tents where a lot of customers took their children for a nice weekend affair. However, one of the challenges the circus had was the fact that the tents were quite ordinary when it came to ambience, plus the seating was not very comfortable. The other challenge was the disagreeable temperature inside, depending on certain seasons. Nonetheless, the excitement around the animals still attracted the crowd. Plus, there was no other medium of entertainment, as we have today: now we have paid television, internet, YouTube and so many other channels for free.
Slowly, the circus became a bit of a challenge for the owners. One issue was around the maintenance of the animals, because animals are not cheap to maintain. Another thing was that a lot of animal owners didnt like how animals were treated in the circus, so they rose against this form of entertainment and influenced others to abandon the circus. Very soon, the people patronizing the circus found that the numbers are reducing, so it was very difficult, both financially and commercially, to run the circus.
At the same time, theatres were becoming a novelty, as they were providing better ambience in nice hotels, leather seating and drama. Hence, people started going to theatres instead of circus, even though the theatre was more expensive.
So when Cirque du Soleil first came up, the idea of a circus was still applied, just that they introduced trapeze artists as the main performers. Soon after, these trapeze artists began to be seen as the so-called heroes within the circus arena. This is how Cirque du Soleil thought of combining the drama and the circus and come up with a novel strategy that differentiated them from the other competitors in the market place.
Retailers are finding themselves to be in a similar scenario. For example, department stores try to bring in the ambience from the theatre and also provide the wow factor. Many retailers tried this even with the grocery supermarkets some of the supermarkets have come up with the wow factors, such as the ones in Australia, where they hang a lot of fake animals from the ceiling.
The Cirque du Soleil came up with the concept of combining the circus, which was about the trapeze artists and the gimmicks of clowns being the centre of attention, magically intertwined with the drama of theatre. Thus, they took the circus from the tents into a proper hotel and provided leather seating and made the whole place more expensive, but not as expensive as the theatre and operas were. But they enabled an entertaining, relaxing and great ambience, with no animals included – a completely different strategy, which we call the blue ocean strategy. Even if competitors tried to copy and emulate this strategy, there were too many hurdles for them to cross. And of course, being the first-mover in a market always has its upside.
Hence, every retailer needs to be nimble and must come up with his own blue ocean strategy to stand out, depending on what the market demands.
There are a lot of new concepts stores, such as the one from Apple the Genius Bar store, where youll find all staff dressed in one color. Not only is the staff knowledgeable about servicing their client, but they also have a fantastic area where you can just walk in with your laptop or Mac and they can teach you, provide tutorials and run mini workshops within the shop itself. No other competitor came anywhere close to it, because they have a very unique strategy, the product is fantastic because the design is amazing and the service is even better. Shopping with Apple is not an errand, its an experience.
The idea is to not just keep up with the times, but to stay way ahead of them.
